Herdr: Your Terminal's New AI Brain

Traditional terminal multiplexers, like tmux, offer invaluable persistence and pane management, yet they remain fundamentally blind to the modern AI development workflow. Built decades before the rise of generative AI, these tools possess no inherent awareness of an agent's operational status, leaving developers unable to discern if an AI is actively working, blocked, or has completed its task within a given pane. This creates a significant visibility gap when orchestrating multiple AI agents.

Herdr addresses this critical oversight directly. It innovates by fusing the robust persistent panes and sessions of tmux with native agent awareness, all seamlessly integrated within a developer's existing terminal environment. This single Rust binary, built with Ratatui, provides real-time status tracking for agents like Claude Code or OpenCode, displaying whether they are `working`, `blocked`, or `done`.

Crucially, Herdr champions user autonomy, allowing developers to retain their highly personalized terminal configurations and workflows. Unlike alternative solutions such as Warp or cmux, which often necessitate adopting an entirely new application environment, Herdr operates directly where developers already work, eliminating the friction of relearning an interface or migrating custom setups. This preserves efficiency and familiarity.

Herdr prioritizes performance and integration by building on a single, lightweight Rust binary. This foundation, leveraging the efficient Ratatui library, renders directly within your existing terminal, eliminating the overhead of Electron or standalone applications. Developers gain maximum speed and minimal resource consumption, ensuring a fluid experience even with multiple agents active.

Designed explicitly for power users, Herdr offers a suite of developer-centric features. Navigate entirely via a keyboard-driven interface, though full mouse support is also available for convenience. Personalize your workspace with extensive theme support, including popular options like Nord and Catppuccin. Integrated system notifications keep you informed of agent status changes without disrupting your focus.

Installation is equally streamlined, reflecting Herdr's commitment to frictionless integration. Acquire the tool effortlessly through preferred package managers: - Brew - Curl - Nix Flake

This flexibility ensures Herdr drops seamlessly into diverse developer workflows, minimizing setup friction and accelerating adoption. It's a tool built to augment, not overhaul, your established terminal environment.

Herdr's true power emerges from its socket API and a robust command-line interface, empowering AI agents to drive the terminal interface directly. Agents gain the autonomy to programmatically spawn new panes, execute intricate tasks, summarize complex results, and even perform automated cleanup of their workspace. This capability transforms agent interaction from passive execution into active, self-managed orchestration, allowing intelligent entities to dynamically control their environment within Herdr.

A standout feature is Herdr's remote SSH mode, which ingeniously splits its operation. A full Herdr server runs on the remote machine where agents execute, while a minimalist client operates on the developer's local terminal. This innovative design ensures developers retain their familiar keybinds, preferred themes, and entire personalized configuration, providing a seamless experience even when interacting with agents on a distant server. It fundamentally resolves common friction points encountered with remote terminal sessions.

This architecture creates a powerful and flexible separation: the agent's execution environment resides securely on the remote server, while the developer's interaction environment remains entirely local. The lightweight Rust binary, leveraging the Ratatui | Ratatui library, facilitates this efficient communication, sending keystrokes and receiving rendered output via a Unix socket. This setup empowers developers to manage distributed AI tasks across various machines without compromising their personal terminal workflow.

Herdr directly challenges the old guard by marrying the robust persistence of tmux with critical AI agent intelligence. While tmux offers reliable session management and split panes, the decades-old tool remains oblivious to the status of AI agents running within its windows. Herdr fills this void, providing real-time tracking of agent states—working, blocked, or done—a fundamental requirement for modern AI-driven workflows and complex orchestrations.

Its philosophy sharply contrasts with solutions like cmux and Warp, which often pull users into their own proprietary applications. Herdr integrates as a single, lightweight Rust binary, enhancing your established terminal environment rather than forcing you into a new, walled-garden ecosystem. Developers retain their perfected shell configurations and keybindings, avoiding the significant friction and learning curve of adapting to an entirely different interface. This approach prioritizes user autonomy and leverages existing infrastructure.

Herdr does have a current limitation: its reliance on Unix sockets means native Windows support remains poor, positioning it as a tool primarily for the extensive macOS and Linux developer communities. While its remote mode can technically operate over SSH to a Linux server from a Windows client, a fully native experience is not yet available. This strategic focus ensures maximum performance and deep integration within its target environments.

What is Herdr?

Herdr is an agent multiplexer that runs as a single Rust binary inside your existing terminal. It allows you to run multiple AI coding agents like Claude Code and Codex in side-by-side panes and tabs, with live status tracking for each agent.

How is Herdr different from tmux?

While inspired by tmux's pane and session management, Herdr adds a critical layer of 'agent awareness'. It can detect and display the live status of AI agents (e.g., working, blocked, idle), a feature that traditional terminal multiplexers like tmux lack.

Does Herdr work on Windows?

At the moment, Herdr has limited Windows support. Its architecture relies heavily on Unix sockets and terminal PTYs, making it best suited for macOS and Linux environments. While WSL is an option, it's not a fully native experience.

What makes Herdr's SSH mode special?

Herdr's remote mode runs a server on the remote machine but uses a thin client on your local machine. This clever setup allows you to use all your local configurations, keybinds, and themes while orchestrating agents on a remote server, solving a common developer frustration.